Thursday, November 19, 2009

Hey, feminists! You ain't woman enough to be Sarah Palin

Her success as an independent female, who was an up-from-the-bootstraps small-town council member, mayor, state regulator and governor, is antithetical to doctrinaire feminism. The latter devolved into a political and grievance-based creed. It is often whiny, and increasingly dominated by single, childless shrill elites. Many try to equate their own unhappiness in matters of family and sex into some sort of cosmic complaint against male patriarchy - as a way of leveraging influence, access, money, and power or simply justifying now regrettable life choices made in their 20’s and 30’s.

Feminism is not about ensuring that Dorothy at K-Mart is not fired because she is female. It is more about an upper-middle-class Dedi Wilson-Reynolds getting to the top of the university food chain, law firm, or government bureaucracy, on the assumption that her gender deserves compensation, in the manner of being non-white or foreign-born or non-Christian.

In such a climate, here comes snazzy, breezy, winking Sarah—happy, good-looking, a mom, and in no need of a rich husband or well-connected dad (in the manner of her critics like a Andrea Mitchell, Sally Quinn, Nancy Pelosi, etc). She inherently exposes feminism as a liberal advocacy movement rather than a bipartisan effort to ensure equal opportunity for women in the workplace and society at large.

Preach it, Victor! Let's face it, Sarah Palin is exactly the kind of woman that feminism purports to produce: capable of thriving alongside men without becoming mannish. Most of her detractors are not capable of that, and so they pretend that it's somehow an undesirable thing. Moreover, she is not grossed out at the idea of being a wife and mother, nor is she rendered subservient by the compromises any married person has to make. Most professional feminists find something demeaning in changing diapers or sharing the housework. In fact, it requires a strength and will that they secretly envy, and once in a while, they'll admit it.

And here's another take on the same phenomenon, using one of my favorite books as an analogy. This is true, too. I've run across intellectual snobbery often enough. And it's nothing more than that. One of the smartest men I ever knew was a high-school dropout who got his education as a Navy SeaBee, at the University of Being-Shot-At-By-Angry-Southeast-Asians. On the other side of the coin, I've known a fair number of people who were (as the great Jerry Clower would have said), "educated far beyond their intelligence." Often enough, a degree is simply a certificate demonstrating that the holder had enough leisure time to pursue it.

Book-larnin' is easy to acquire (besides the hard sciences, that is; those are another matter). But Sarah's knowledge is earned, which is what the chattering classes despise her for. As far as I'm concerned, if you can't change your own oil, you're not smart enough to sneer at Sarah Palin.